


becoming

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: God of War
Genre: Character Development, Eventual Romance, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Morally Ambiguous Character, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prophetic Visions, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-10 00:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14726801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Faye and Kratos, from their first meeting onwards. Recovery, change, and new beginnings. A found family for both sides.“When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.”― Caitlyn Siehl





	1. crimson

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks and love to Kelley and Lin for this entire fic, who not only have been an endless source of inspiration, always there to talk through plots and characters and the intricacies of mental illness, they also helped me proof-read and edit, as well as giving constant inspiring comments and feedback. They made this whole thing possible.

Faye startled awake, bolting upright and staring into the dark, breathing hard. She held up her hand, and the Levithan axe twisted off its hook and flew to her palm. She scanned the cabin in its icy light, searching for whatever could have set off the twinge of panic in her chest.

A moment passed, at then another, and the panic subsided into a tug. Faye shivered. Someone had crossed her stave. _Her_ stave, constructed so that no one she didn’t wish to enter would be able to. Maybe a god would be able to force their way through, but she’d taken precautions against any of the Aesir or Vanir she could call to mind.

Shivering, Faye cast her awareness outward and forward, then shivered harder at what she saw.

 

***

 

Faye armed herself before she left the cabin the next morning, strapping her axe and shield to her back, covering her forearms and chest with what she had left of her old armor. She stitched metal into the lining of her gloves, repaired the sheath for her knife, and braided mistletoe into her hair.

On her belt, beside her knife, she carried what she could gather for medical supplies; a bundle of herbs, a flask of alcohol, cloth bandages. A powder that the woman who lived far deeper in the woods had given her, that claimed to soothe beasts and men alike. She didn’t know how seriously the god she could sense somewhere in her woods was injured, but she knew that they were. Their aura burned with the panicked energy of an injured animal.

Faye twirled an errant lock of hair around a twig and stuck the twig behind her ear, keeping it out of her face. She closed and locked the door behind her, made sure there was ample firewood in the pile outside, and set out.

The path would have clear to her, even if she couldn’t feel the tug of energy pulling her toward them. The god _burned_ , aura flaring with power and emotion. Wounded, _definitely_. And far from home.

Faye was interrupted often; she knew the Draugr and Reavers that wandered outside her stave well enough to defend herself without missing a beat. She’d fought a troll, once. And then another troll, right after, because trolls were pack creatures, and she hadn’t remembered or realized that until too late.

A brief, dizzying vision struck her, doubled her over. _A boy, twelve at the oldest, holding Faye’s knife, flailing it at the shoulder of a fallen troll, shrieking hysterically. A pair of pale hands take hold of the boy’s arms, but before their owner’s face can come into view…_

Faye straightened up, biting her lip. She walked forward with purpose, and the dead did not trouble her.

The feeling led her to the edge of the river, and she backtracked upstream, to where she’d left her boat. The first of the autumn leaves crunched under her feet as she untied the boat from the dock and climbed in, pushing off the side with the oar.

A little further on, impulsively, Faye tossed the rope she used to tie her boat up into a tree branch, leaping onto the bank and moving diagonally away from the river. The sun was warm on the back of her neck, and her pace picked up.

Through the trees, Faye could see movement. Slow, struggling. Upright, but hunched over. Pale, with swathes of red.

Faye walked forward and then knelt, picking up a tree branch and breaking it over her knee. The pale figure twisted, then made a guttural noise, doubling over even more. Faye straightened, moving the rest of the distance toward the figure.

The man was bleeding, that’s the first thing Faye noticed, crossing toward him. A ragged bandage was wrapped around his stomach, slowly soaking through with crimson. There was blood on his lips, too, and torn scabs on his forearms, as if he’d been scratching at the half-healed wounds there. The red of his blood was mirrored by the scarlet tattoos across his face and chest, stark against his strangely pale skin.

His eyes were wild when they met hers, burning with such fierce emotion that she flinched. He seemed to be trying for rage, scowling bitterly, but what seemed to encompass him instead was _despair_ , some soul-deep agony that would kill him faster than the weeping wound.

He was clutching a pair of blades as long as his forearms, curved and ornate and blazing with fire, chains hanging from the handles and wrapped loosely around his wrists. As she watched, he stumbled, pointing the blades shakily at her.

Faye darted forward, grabbing his wrists. He was stronger than her, taller and bigger, but weakened by blood loss and startled by her advance. He tried to fight anyway, limbs trembling with the effort.

“Let go,” she told him, and felt the muscles of his wrists tense even further. “Just stop fighting, and let go, it’s alright.”

The man swayed, even more color draining from his unnaturally pale cheeks. “Not…” he slurred, grip finally going slack. The blades extinguished and dropped into the dirt, and the man caught them by the chains, though he made no move to use them. “Not al...right...”

 _But maybe it will be_ , Faye pondered, pressing one hand to the man’s chest to hold him up. With her free hand, she reached into the pouch at her waist and drew out the bundle of herbs wrapped in cloth. The stranger turned his head away when she offered them, but she shook him, meeting his eyes. “Do you want to live?”

The man took a long time to answer, long enough that a dark realization caught in Faye’s chest. But eventually, starting straight at her, he nodded.

Faye nodded back, firm, and held up the herbs again. “Chew these.”

“What will they do?” His Norse was clumsy, accented, but intelligible.

“Some are numbing, some are healing. Some are to calm the mind.” Faye kept her voice steady, holding the stranger upright as he nodded tersely and fumbled the bundle from her hand, tipping it into his mouth with a shaky hand. He scowled.

“Bitter.”

Faye laughed softly, resting one hand on his back and one on his chest and tugging him into motion. “Yes, yes. I would think so.”

 

***

 

Faye made her way back to the cabin, half guiding and half carrying the pale man with her. He responded to her quiet questions with guttural noises or silence, except when she asked his name.

“Kratos,” he rumbled. Not a Norse name. Roman, maybe. Or Greek. It explained the accent, at least, and the distinctly foreign tattoos.

He was just short of a deadweight, stumbling and leaning on her, but he was at least attempting to hold himself up, stubborn. He was still bleeding, and he burned with fever. Faye murmured curses as she walked, senses firing in all directions from the proximity of the god.

Finally, _finally_ , after too long and too much blood and Faye’s heart beating faster and faster as the Kratos’ heart beat slower and slower, finally they made it back to the cabin.

Faye laid him out on the cabin floor, rolled up her sleeves, and unwrapped the bandage.

The wound wasn’t new, the bruising, clumsy attempt at stitches, and scabs proved that. He had overexerted himself and torn it open, she guessed.

The good news was that it wasn’t infected. The bad was that it was deep, all the way through his body, and massive.

Faye gritted her teeth and unraveled the old stitches, fetching her supplies.

It was simple, technically, to fix. Clean the wound, then start with the needle and thread. One stitch at a time, entry and exit wounds. Block out the quiet cries of pain.

By the time she finished, Kratos was unconscious, breathing labored and shaky, but deep, and his heart was beating steadily.

Faye cleaned and bandaged the wounds on his arms, which were far simpler. They seemed far older than the more horrible one in his stomach, already scarred beneath the new scabs, and there was no clue as to why they’d reopened. She glanced at the blades that Kratos had let fall on the floor of the cabin. Their chains matched the pattern of raised scars on his arms.

_Kratos, older, bearded, stands beside a fallen tree, a bandage around his forearm beginning to unravel. His whole body seems to wince in some long-ago pain, and he breathes for a moment before wrapping the bandage tight again._

A word jumped into Faye’s mind. _Seared._

Gritting her teeth, she fetched a cloth and cleaned the blood from his skin almost without thinking, and dragged the man to her bed, draping him in furs.

Sitting against the wall beside the bed, close enough to feel the feverish heat Kratos burned with, Faye matched her breaths to his, deep and slow.

_A boy just shy of manhood leaps from a ledge of rock, transforming on the way down, skin becoming fur, hands and feet shrinking and changing shape, claws and fangs replacing nails and teeth. The wolf races after a pale, armored man, who lifts a tattooed arm to hurl what is unmistakably the Leviathan axe at some unseen foe…_

Faye woke in the darkness again, staring at the man on her bed, at the one pale arm tattooed with red that hung from beneath the blankets.

“I suppose I’m keeping you, then,” she told the empty air.


	2. journaling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Faye tends to Kratos, and comes to terms with certain discoveries.

_ Kratos hasn’t woken up yet, but he sleeps fitfully. It’s not the pain, as far as I can tell. When I changed his bandages, he was no more distressed than when the wounds were left alone. It would explain a lot, for him to be a warrior. He’s desensitized, like me. _

_ He’s Greek, too. Everyone defaults to their first language when they’re not fully conscious. Even if he didn’t, the fact that every other muttering is a curse against the Greek Pantheon would give him away.  _

_ But why would he come here? How could even survive the journey, with a wound like that? Gods are resilient, but it takes a special kind of determination to live through that kind of damage. _

_ Paradoxes, complications. _

_ If he would in a less fragile state, this would be easier. Jörmungandr would know something, as would, perhaps, the witch. _

_ But he is ill, and wounded. My presence is needed here. Even once he is healed, I would not trust him to remain alone. Not this early on the path. _

_ I’m making up a broth with the herbs that I was told were good for fever. I do not doubt he will survive; our stories are intertwined from this point onward. But time grows short, I can feel it.  _

_ * _

_ The fever hasn’t broken yet, but he woke up enough for me to get some water and some of the broth into him. He’s barely lucid, still muttering about the Greek gods. _

_ I’ve been hearing rumors… I assumed they were just tall tales, but who can know? If anyone could have killed a god… it would be Kratos. He will again. _

_ * _

_ Got some more broth and water into him, changed the bandages again. Looking through my old journals, By Tyr, my handwriting was atrocious. _

_ Well, at least I know that nothing I do will kill him. _

_ * _

_ He hasn’t spoken to me yet, since we met. _

_ I’ve never met someone who manages to be so stubborn and so defeated at once. At least he seems to accept that he needs help. _

_ He’s awake more often, now, and the fever’s gone down. But I can’t seem to hold his attention. I can’t be sure if he’s just unfocused, or if he’s watching something over my shoulder. _

_ In the interest of reducing his paranoia, I don’t look until he  _ stops  _ looking. _

_ * _

_ The scene: _

_ I’m sharpening my axe, assuming Kratos is asleep, because he was asleep the last fifty times I checked. _

_ And then he speaks. Out of the blue, in this creaking, empty voice. _

_ “Assure that it is sharp.” _

_ And then passes out. _

_ … _

_ The axe lives in the rafters, now. Better safe than sorry. _

_ * _

_ Today’s mutterings I’ve overheard: _

 

  * __“I’m not sorry”__


  * _“I dare you to try”_


  * _“Athena”_


  * _“Father” and “mother”_


  * _“Sparta”_



 

_ * _

_ He’s awake, properly awake for the first time in a few days, actually looking at me. He still won’t speak. I’ve been gradually adding more solids to the broth, and he’s been keeping it down with relative ease. _

_ The wound is healing well. He’s definitely a god, because he shouldn’t have survived it. It’s like his vital organs moved out of the way. _

_ He’s awfully determined for someone who doesn’t seem to want to be alive.  _

_ * _

_ It’s funny, he can take my poking and prodding at his wound without a blink, but he pulls faces at the taste of bitter herbs. _

_ I don’t know what to think of this yet, any of it, but I’m hopeful. _

_ * _

_ Things I shouldn’t be thinking about: the attractiveness of the half-dead foreign god who’s taken over my bed. _

_ Things I am thinking about: just guess. _

_ * _

_ Found another cache of journals. I don’t even remember half of these visions. I’ve been adding the more recent ones to the blank pages. _

_ I’ll have to burn all of these soon. He cannot know, he must discover it later. _

_ They say our prophecies are absolute, but they don’t account for the presence of someone like Kratos. _

_ … I have to check something. _

_ * _

_ He’s the Ghost of Sparta. _

_ I still don’t know what to think of this. _

_ * _

_ I knew that. I should have known that. Of course, who else? Who else would kill a god? _

_ God-killer, fate-killer. _

_ This has to work. It has to. There’s no other way. _

_ * _

_ I should just kill him. While he’s at my mercy, I should just eliminate him, before he can cause any damage. _

_ It’s what he wants anyway. _

_ * _

_ I think I woke him up with my pacing. He looks so scared. He’s trying to hide it, but he is. _

_ I don’t know what to do. _

_ * _

_ I’ve read everything I have. All the journals of visions, all the scrolls of history. The news that I’ve gotten in the last week. _

_ This will work. It has to. _

_ I can do this. _

_ Until gods grow good. _


	3. hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is conflict and respect.

“Get up.”

Nothing.

“Kratos. Up. Now.”

Nothing, save for a quiet groan. Faye hefted her axe, poking Kratos’ tattooed shoulder with the pommel.

“Get. Up.”

“I am still injured, woman.”

“Call me ‘woman’ again and I’ll poke you a lot harder. My  _ name _ is  _ Faye _ .”

Kratos, wisely, conceded the point. “I am still injured, Faye.”

“You survived the entire journey from Greece in a far worse state than you’re in now.”

That got his attention. His head snapped up, eyes burning. “How do you know where I came from?”

Faye rested the axe on the ground, planting one hand on her hip. “Even if it wasn’t Greek you were feverishly muttering in, every other mutter was a curse against the Greek gods. And  _ Kratos _ isn’t very Norse.”

Kratos nodded, a scowl hiding embarrassment. “That is… fair.”

“Get up.”

“Why?”

“One, that’s  _ my  _ bed. Two, your fever’s broken and my food stores are running low.” She prodded him again. “We’ll both feel better once we’re outside. Besides, if you want to wear something other than a repurposed dress, I’ll need materials.”

That, out of everything, seemed to get Kratos moving. He heaved himself out of the bed, standing unsteadily, barefoot. He somehow managed to seem intimidating and ridiculous at once.

Faye gave him a once-over, frowning critically. Even weakened, Kratos assumed the stance of a warrior, seemingly braced for a fight at any moment. As she watched, his already sour expression twisted into a scowl.

“Relax,” Faye told him. “There’s nothing threatening here.”

Kratos seemed to doubt that. His eyes flicked to the corner of the room, then back to her. Faye fought the urge to follow his gaze. She clicked her fingers. “Let’s go.”

Kratos, still barefoot, followed her out the door.

 

***

 

The hunting trip was, at first, surprisingly uneventful. Kratos obeyed orders with the punctuality of a soldier, following her lead.

As they walked, she told him about the dangers of the woods, about Draugr and Reavers, the more rare, more dangerous beasts, Revenants and Trolls and Ogres. He listened, still scowling slightly, taking in the information.

Pausing, Faye crouched, motioning Kratos down beside her. “Tracks. Not deer, too round. Wild boar? Fresh, see?”

Kratos growled. “Your information on the enemies in this land was  _ perhaps _ relevant, but I am  _ aware  _ of how to hunt,  _ Faye.  _ You—”

Faye grabbed him by the front of his makeshift tunic and slammed him against a tree, pressing the handle of her axe into his throat. “You will not disrespect me, Kratos. This is my homeland, my woods, my house you stay in, my bed you sleep in; you  _ will not _ treat me with anything but the utmost honor. Do you not come from Greece? Where hospitality is honored and repaid with gifts?” Faye gave a snarl of her own. “I know this land  _ far _ better than you, so you will speak with respect or you will be  _ silent _ .”

After a moment of charged, furious eye contact, Kratos backed down, bowing his head and nodding slowly, as if acknowledging a superior.

_ He really is like an animal,  _ Faye thought.  _ In nature if nothing else, he’s closer to wolves I’ve seen than any man or god. _

With barely a change of expression, Kratos snatched something from Faye’s belt and flung her into the leaves, planting one bare foot against the tree behind him and leaping, not onto her, but over her, tossing aside the sheath of the knife he had grabbed, digging it into the chest of a Draugr, ripping it clean in two with one movement. As it dissolved into ash, he rolled with the movement, ending up back on his feet.

Stunned, Faye snatched up the Leviathan axe and moved to join him against the half dozen Draugr that had risen to surround them.

Kratos lunged forward with a wild yell, hacking indiscriminately. He was efficient, brutally so, even armed with a hunting knife and nothing else. By the time she had taken down two of the things, the rest were ash already.

Kratos staggered sideways, one hand pressed to his stomach, then steadied himself, breathing hard. 

“Are you bleeding?” Faye asked, calling her axe back to her hand. “Did the stitches tear?”

Kratos shook his head, a quick, jerky movement, then turned back to her. Anger twisted him, bending him forward slightly, curling a scowl across his face. He bent down, retrieving the dagger sheath from the forest floor, cleaning the blade before he covered it and handed it over again. Faye tucked it back into her belt, not looking away from him.

As she watched Kratos, she saw the anger cave in, collapse into that exhaustion she had seen on him when they first met. He trembled slightly, then steadied.

“Onward, then?” Faye asked, quiet. Kratos, straightened, shook himself from his daze, and moved to follow her, glancing ever-so-often at the ash streaking his palms.


	4. scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some wounds are far easier to treat.

“Do you know how to clean a hide?” Faye asked, rolling the dear they had killed off her shoulder and dropping it onto a pressed-flat patch of earth and grass. Kratos looked startled, but he nodded. His gaze stayed on her for a moment, raking over her in a way that would offend her if it wasn’t so clearly admiring.

Kneeling down, Faye cut and peeled the pelt from the deer in a few quick movements, handing it and the knife over to Kratos before rolling up her sleeves and getting to work on cleaning and sorting the meat. 

She glanced at Kratos on occasion, but he seemed competent enough, scraping the hide clean carefully, if more quickly than she would have done it.

Looking back down at her own task, a strangely perfect peace fell between them, until Faye heard a quiet hiss and a muttered curse.

She glanced toward him, and he was scowling, bleeding from a deep cut in the ball of his thumb. Sighing, she moved into his line of sight before taking his wrist, pulling a roll of bandages from the pouch at her waist and wrapping up the wound, putting careful pressure on it with her palm.

“Slow down,” she advised. Kratos just scowled, wiping blood off the knife and getting back to work. He was being reckless, Faye noticed, watching him. Careful with the hide, far less careful with himself.

_ I do not like the implications of that, _ she thought, watching Kratos out of the corner of her eye even as she turned her focus away.  _ But it puts some things in perspective. _

 

***

 

Something was wrong, Faye could tell even a meter from the house. She felt it descend, a cold aching cramp in her bones, a weight in the back of her mind. She stood, slinging the pelt over her shoulder and turning toward the door. It hung open, and through it she could see Kratos, upright and frozen.

Two steps, three, and she was inside. Kratos stood with his back to the doorway, staring down at the pile of his belongings Faye had shoved into the corner, a pile topped by the blades he had brought with him. Their chains were pooled around them, and the edges were still flecked with old, coppery stains.

Faye stepped around him, placing herself between him and the remnants of his old life. “Kratos.” His gaze didn’t shift. His eyes were glassy, unfocused. “ _ Kratos. _ ” No response. She reached out and touched his shoulder, pulling her hand back when he flinched and coiled as if to strike.

“Fárbauti!” Faye cried, the name springing to her lips.

A sharp intake of breath, and Kratos finally looked at her, the distant look fading from his eyes. He steadied himself, shifting his weight.

“What… what was that name?”

“Fárbauti?” She pronounced it with the accent of her homeland, twisting the  _ f  _ into a  _ v _ , rolling the  _ r,  _ clipping the vowel at the end. “It’s your Norse name.”

Kratos muttered the name under his breath, tasting it, and nodded.

Somewhere in him, Faye sensed some deep ache unravel slightly, and smiled.

 

***

 

“These wounds,” Faye said softly. “They are not new.” She carefully unwrapped the bandages from the stitched-up wound in Kratos’ stomach, setting them aside. It was the newest of wounds that covered him; years of scar tissue had built up across his body, covering his already unnaturally pale skin in raised white lines. “They’re months old, at  _ least _ . They’re only in this state because not only is it a Hel’ of a wound, you clearly didn’t rest long enough for it to heal.” She dipped her fingers into a clay pot, scooping out the gelatinous, herb-speckled salve. “How long were you alone?”

“I do not know,” Kratos rumbled, shifting obediently so she could reach both sides of the wound. “I did not keep track.”

“Approximately?”

“You are not entitled to the specifics of my journey—”

“I’m just trying to help, Fárbauti.”

Kratos bit his lip and acquiesced, frowning. “I… truly do not know. It may have been years, it may have been longer than that. I did not mark the days.”

Faye nodded, checking over the wound as she rubbed the salve onto it. Kratos exhaled quietly, a small sound of relief.

“Who did the first stitches?”

Kratos made a low sound, but didn’t reply.

“Kratos, who?”

“The latest in a line of…” he paused as he searched for a word, fumbling with the language he was still learning to speak. “… healers… I have come across in my travels.”

Faye nodded quietly, reaching for the bandages around his forearms, pausing when Kratos flinched so hard his elbows knocked into his ribs. “Do these hurt?”

Kratos paused, seeming to consider the question. It was a soldier’s consideration, weighing pain and focus and function against supplies and time and pride. Faye changed her question.

“How much do they hurt?”

Kratos’ expression changed immediately, but he still didn’t answer.

“Fárbauti,” Faye pressed. “Tell me about them?”

Instead of replying directly, he scowled, crossing his arms over his chest, hunching forward slightly.  _ A wounded animal, _ Faye thought, an image flashing into her mind of Kratos in the future, lying on his back in the snow, bloodied and gasping, bruises blossoming on his skin and then fading again.  _ Protecting himself _ .

“They are old,” Kratos rumbles. “Older than they appear, and they will not heal. No matter who I consult or how well I treat them, they remain as they are. I do not wish to have them exposed.”

“Alright,” Faye sat back on her heels. She watched Kratos’ eyes glass over, and snapped her fingers. “Stay in the present, Fárbauti. It’s alright.”

Kratos growled softly. “I do not need your help.”

“Yes you do, Kratos. And there’s no shame in that.”

He blinked at her, scowling for a moment as he processed it, then looked away, silent, brooding. He rubbed at his forearms in quiet agitation, almost fidgeting.

“You’re a god, aren’t you?” Faye asked, very quiet. Kratos jerked like he’d been hit, his head snapping around to look at her.

“What?  _ How—?! _ ”

There was terror in his eyes, in his voice, but something darker, too, deeper. Some desperate, traumatic pain that Faye immediately regretted getting anywhere near.

“You shouldn’t have survived this,” she said, after a moment, resting her palm on the wound in his stomach. Kratos made a soft sound, a choked sort of exhale that seemed to be an attempt at a laugh, falling short.

“I did not mean to.”


	5. progress

Faye had nearly forgotten about the ravine that was short walk from her house. It wasn’t really noteworthy; nearly hidden by trees from every side, with nothing of real interest at the bottom. Even falling in would result in little more than pain; scrapes and sprains and bruises, a broken bone or two if she was really unlucky. 

Having dismissed the ravine of any importance, she thought nothing of coming back from a hunting trip to see Kratos staring off between the trees, not until she looked closer. His body language gave everything away. Tight muscles, brow furrowed, just slightly forward on his toes.

Dropping the boar she had brought home behind the cabin, Faye jogged back to where he stood. She knew better than to just touch him without preamble by this point, so she moved into his periphery first, concern twisting her expression. 

“Kratos?” Barely a twitch in response. “Hey.” Knowing she had at least some of his attention, she touched his shoulder, and his eyes darted toward her, amber in the fading light. “Not planning anything, are you?”

A jerky shake of his head. “It would not be a good place, anyway.” His accent had thickened, the way it did whenever the past took hold of him. “It is not deep enough for a quick death, and too… uneven. Painful, to hit the sides. And… there…” he pointed out a jut in the rock. “... would just slow the fall too much. It would be an embarrassing attempt, really.”

Uniquely disturbed, but not entirely surprised, Faye looped her arm through his. “Let’s go back to the house. It’s getting cold out here.”

She  _ was  _ surprised when he took the hint, not even untangling his arm from hers as he followed her back to the house, crouching down to watch while she cleaned her kill.

“How long was ‘years’?” Faye asked, eventually.

“Mmn?” Kratos had sprawled out slightly, watching her struggle to manhandle the boar pelt. She would have asked for help, if she still trusted him with sharp objects.

“You said… earlier… that you had been alone for ‘years’. How many years?”

Kratos didn’t reply, brow furrowed, as if he was counting. Faye watched him for a moment, then rephrased.

“How many generations?”

That was an easier question, Faye could see it on his face. “Six.”

“Six?” It didn’t hit her for a moment. “ _ Six? _ ”

Kratos nodded. Faye stared at the boar carcass without seeing it.  _ Six generations.  _ “How are you still alive?” she blurted out eventually.

“Reluctantly,” Kratos replied.

Faye laughed, just laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all, at this foreign, broken god who was prophesied to be her husband and yet spoke of death like an old friend he desperately wished to see. A smile flitted across his face, then faded.

“By  _ Týr _ , Fárbauti. A god indeed.”

 

***

 

“Alright,” Faye said, poking Kratos awake with the pommel of her axe. “We’re getting things done today, so get up.”

Knowing better than to argue, he sat up, pushing the axe away from his face, shading his eyes from light shining through the window. “I wish you would not do that.”

Faye spun the axe, hooking it onto her back. “You don’t wake up unless I do. I’ve tried.”

Wordlessly, Kratos nodded, but he didn’t seem to have heard. His gaze had drifted to the corner of the room. Setting her jaw, she stepped into his sightline, and when he looked up, the light hit his eyes, and they flashed gold.

Abruptly speechless, Faye just stared, the early-morning sunlight turning the broken god into something strange and beautiful.

“Give me your hand,” she said, the words spilling out. Kratos frowned.

“What?”

After a moment of fumbling, she regained herself. “We need to go through your old things today, and touch tends to keep you grounded.”

“Why?” his voice had sunk into that dead flatness, and it made Faye shiver.

“Why not?” she planted her hands on her hips. “Maybe you can keep putting off getting things done, but this is my house. Progress.”

Kratos nodded, and heaved himself up, following her over to the pile of his belongings in the corner. She reached out and curled her fingers around his wrist, trying to anchor him. His gold eyes flashed toward her again, but he didn’t pull away.

As if he’d been planning what to do, Kratos pulled the red cloak toward him, laying it out. A beat, a breath, and he picked up the blades. The chains rattled, and Faye could feel his very soul flinch. He set them down in the center of the cloak, folding the fabric over them. Once they were out of sight, something relaxed, not by much, but enough.

“Do you have a place these can be hidden?”

Wordlessly, Faye nodded, taking the folded bundle from him. She pushed aside the wolfskin rug and worked her fingers between the floorboards, pulling up the trapdoor. There was a space beneath the floorboards that just fit.

When she straightened up, Kratos was standing. In one hand he held a crumpled swathe of red fabric, like the cloak, but smaller, more intricately designed. The other held what Faye recognized as a Greek skirt, red leather studded with metal, and what looked like a sachet of herbs.

“This…” his voice was a low rumble, and Faye found herself short of breath just listening to him speak. “…can be stored away.” He handed her the red fabric, and she took two steps and leaned up on her toes to tuck it onto a shelf in the rafters. The sachet and skirt he held onto without a word.

“First, breakfast,” Faye said, brightly, met with another flash of gold. “Then, clothes.”

 

***

 

Kratos cooperated while Faye took measurements and sketched with charcoal on the various pieces of leather and pelts collected from the hunting they had done. He was mostly silent, answering her questions about preferences with short sentences, or individual words.

Once she was confident with the pattern, she cut the leather with her knife, threaded a needle, and started to sew. Kratos settled down beside her, watching.

She wasn’t the best seamstress, but she coped. Living in the woods alone for a hundred and fifty years, she learned to cope, to make her own world from scratch.

“Faye?” Kratos asked, and she realized that she had stopped moving, staring at the half-finished garment in her hands.

“I’m alright,” she murmured, but she didn’t start again. After a moment, Kratos reached out, taking the needle and the leather from her. She almost stopped him, but the words caught when he began to work.

_ That’ll teach me to make assumptions _ . Faye thought, blindsided. Kratos’ hands were huge, calloused and muscular, and the needle was tiny between his fingers. But he showed a talent clearly born of time, working with care and speed.

Quietly, she picked up a second piece of leather, this one thicker and heavier, and started to work beside him.


	6. bathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bathing, and connected events.

Faye gave Kratos a slow once-over, nodding slowly. “Grow out the beard, Fárbauti, and you’ll look like a proper Norseman.”

Kratos’ hand jumped self-consciously to his jaw. There was a scruff of a beard there, thickest at the point of his chin. Faye chuckled at him, and he hesitantly melted, hands dropping back to his sides.

Despite the stark crimson of his tattoos, and the Greek skirt that just showed beneath the patchwork of pelts and leather, despite the strange way he held himself, he could, from a distance, have been native. The familiarity soothed her, and it seemed to help him too.

He was beautiful, Faye thought, momentarily awestruck. He was tall, as tall as her, and sturdy, built like the trunk of a tree, but every muscle still distinct. The sunlight turned his pale skin to a faint gold, and threw his features and the curves of his muscles into deep shadow. His eyes glittered amber from beneath the shadow of his heavy brow. The red tattoos stood out sharply against his pale skin and the dark drape of his clothing, foreign and bright. He looked the part of a god, powerful and ancient and unhindered. Even his expression, usually sour and tense, gave a impressive weight to him in that one moment, an unspoken dominance.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Faye said, snapping herself out of the daze. “No one wants to bathe after the frost hits, so we’re doing it now.”

For a moment, Kratos looked like he was going to complain. Faye raised an eyebrow at him, and he seemed to decide against it.

“Come on, then.” Faye checked her belt for the pouch of supplies, grabbed her cloak from where it was hanging, then opened the door and set out, keeping her pace slow until she was sure that Kratos was following her.

The walk to the river was mostly silent, their footsteps on the dry leaves making enough noise that the quiet wasn’t uncanny.

Halfway between the house and the river, Faye stopped, drawing her axe. Kratos froze beside her, but she just hurled her axe at the raven that had perched nearby. A squawk, a flurry of blood and feathers, the quiet thud of the body falling to the forest floor.

Faye summoned the axe back to her hand. “ _Kamphundr,_ ” she swore. “Ravens are the spies of Odin. Never trust them.”

Kratos nodded, relaxing from a warrior’s stance. He was breathing hard, Faye noticed, fast and shaky, like he’d been running, just from the possibility of a threat. She frowned. _How taut must his nerves be? Poor man._

“We’re almost to the river,” she said quietly, touching Kratos’ elbow. He startled, then relaxed, his breathing evening out. “Come on.”

He followed her, like a wolf behind the pack leader, his footsteps quiet even on the blanket of leaves.

 

***

 

Faye laid her cloak out on the riverbank near a calm, shallow patch of water, and piled her belongings on it, starting with her axe, then unbuckling her pauldron and belt, leaving everything on the fabric. She unwound the leather wrappings on her legs, then stripped off her tunic and leggings, folding her clothes into a neat pile.

“If you don’t want to get your new furs wet, Kratos,” she called. “I suggest you take them off.”

Kratos coughed, carefully taking off the new garments, leaving them on the corner of Faye’s cloak, waiting by the edge of the water. The bandages, Faye noticed, stayed on his arms.

Faye sorted through her pouch of supplies and found the bar of soap she had bought in town, snapping it in two and handing one half to Kratos. He muttered thanks and stepped into the water, flinching slightly at the chill.

There was nothing particularly special about the act of bathing. It was functional, logical, clearing away grime and sweat and dead skin, cleaning half-healed wounds. Even beside the man that she was almost certain would end up her husband somewhere down the line, it wasn’t (too) different from how she would normally care for herself.

The slight differences, of course, were the sideways glances she threw at the figure bathing beside her, watching as he carefully washed and treated every wound but the ones on his arms, shivering in the cold water.

Sitting down on the pebbled bottom of the river, Faye twisted her damp hair up into a bun as she scrubbed at her neck and back, then let it down again, sinking lower into the water and running a comb through the tangled reddish-blond mass that floated beneath the surface.

When she looked up, she was met with a flash of amber, locking eyes with Kratos for a moment before he flushed beneath his patchy beard and glanced away. Faye smirked, watching him nearly fumble the soap into the river.

She was struck with that sense of awe again, watching Kratos. It was like watching a mountain move, the unhurried shift and ripple of muscles, graceful and deliberate, but with the strength of a leviathan. Those gold eyes met hers again, and this time she was the one to look away, not ashamed, just distracted, struggling to pull the comb through the length of her hair.

Scowling, she sat up and then doubled over, trying to twist her arms to reach the knot that kept catching on her comb. She listened disinterestedly to the splashing sounds of movement.

A huge, warm hand closed over hers, taking the comb and working it gently through her hair, starting from the ends. For a moment Faye thought she was having a vision, but it was too real, too vivid.

“What are you doing?”

“You will only tangle it more if you do not start at the bottom,” Kratos said. Faye twisted around to watch him work. He brushed her hair with the same precision that he had sewn the pelts together, brow knitted with concentration.

_This was worth it,_ Faye thinks, turning away again, scrubbing at her legs, enjoying the feeling of her hair being slowly untangled, leaning back into the warmth of the presence behind her. _A hundred and fifty years? That was worth this. That was worth what this will be._


	7. burns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Faye can't fix everything.

Kratos was shivering.

He was sitting on the riverbank, still unclothed, waiting for his skin to dry, shivering miserably. His teeth were even chattering. He held his arms crossed over his chest, scowling, shoulders hunched.

“Cold, Fárbauti?” Faye teased gently, wrapping herself in her cloak.

“Yes,” he groused, biting down on a shudder. “I come from a warm land, far south of here. We did not h- _ ave _ —” he shivered through the word. “—a winter. And autumn was far warmer than thi...this.”

“Those wet bandages can’t be helping.”

Kratos pulled his arms closer to his chest. He didn’t speak, just looked away. Faye took pity on him, shedding her cloak and holding it out.

“Let me check on those wounds and I’ll give you this.” She dangled the cloak in front of him, watching with mild amusement as he unhappily considered his options.

She saw him slump in defeat, holding out his arms like he was offering himself up for slaughter. Her expression faltered, dropping from a half-smile to a frown. The wounds —and the act of tending them— meant more to him than she could understand. She draped the cloak around his shoulders, retrieving the pouch of supplies from the disorganized pile they had left on the riverbank.

Kratos just sat there, half turned to her, arms held out, eyes squeezed shut. Biting her lip, Faye carefully peeled and cut away the layers of bandages.

The wounds beneath were grisly, even worse than she’d been bracing for. She had seen burns before, burns that went deep, to muscle and bone.

She had never seen anything like this.

For a moment, Faye just stared silently, forcing down nausea. She couldn’t fix this. She barely knew where to begin. 

The truth was bitter; more bitter than the herbs that she had fed him, but she forced herself to bite down and bear it.

She couldn’t fix him. 

She couldn’t undo the damage that had already been done. Not the burns, not the wound in his chest, not the decades of trauma he had endured. She couldn’t begin to comprehend what he had suffered. Her visions of conversations they would have only gave her fragments of her to-be-husband’s past, and his mutterings in the midst of nightmares gave her names and nothing else. He had been hurt beyond what she could fathom, and she couldn’t even  _ begin _ to fix it.

But… she could try to help. She could at the very,  _ very  _ least, try. Not to fix him, she wouldn’t delude herself, wouldn’t pretend that she could make everything better with a touch or a kiss. But she could try and make it easier for him to just… exist. He had told her that he didn’t want to die, but she guessed that the question he really answered was whether or not he wanted to keep suffering. He didn’t.

She couldn’t  _ fix _ him. But there was always an opportunity for healing, physical or not, and if she could help, she would.

“Alright,” she said, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully. “I’m going to scrape away what’s dead. Tell me when I hit something that hurts.” She picked up her knife from where she had dropped it on the riverbank and set to work, cutting away blackened flesh until Kratos made a wordless sound of pain. She set the knife down, searching her pouch for a loose scrap of bandage to wipe away the ooze of blood. With her fingers on his wrist, Faye could feel Kratos’ pulse spike.

“There’s not much I can do for this, unfortunately. How… old are these wounds?” She looked up. Kratos’ eyes were open now, and met hers with only a moment of hesitation.

“I cannot give you a time in years.”

“Are they older than this one?” Faye gestured to the wound in his stomach. He nodded. “How much older?” Silence. “Ten years?”

“More.” His voice was flat. He was used to these kinds of questions, Faye could tell. It made sense; he was more scar tissue than skin, of course he knew a healer’s caravan as well as a battlefield.

“Twenty?” That got a shrug. 

“Approximately?” A nod. 

Faye looked at the wounds. She frowned, unsure of how to phrase what she was thinking. “From the extent of the damage, I’m guessing… continuous use of—” Faye felt his pulse spike again. She drew her hands away from the worst of the damage and brushed her fingers over his palms, over chain-shaped burn scars. From gripping the chains, most likely. These were healed, just lumps of scar tissue. Nothing like the mess of his arms.

“In answer…” Kratos rumbled, “I only ceased to use the blades when I entered your home.”

Faye swallowed the urge to curse. 

“Alright,” she said. “The best we can do is just… keep them clean.” Kratos twitched. “Sorry to force you back into the water, but if you want to keep your arms…”

His face blank, Kratos shrugged off the cloak and stepped back into the river, crouching down and holding his arms under the water. Faye watched, half interested and half disgusted, at the blood and pus that streamed away. Kratos didn’t seem at all affected, but what looked like calm on a first glance seemed more like emptiness when she looked closer. She recognized the expression.

She bent down to clean her knife. What was a hundred and fifty years? It felt like yesterday that she was…

_ Stop it. You already have enough trouble keeping your head out of the future, don’t start getting stuck in the past, too. _

Faye stepped into the water and knelt beside her future husband. “You’re lucky I did not wait to bathe, Fárbauti, or you might not have arms anymore.”

Kratos’ mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile but it broke the blank look on his face, and that made her relax. Prophesied to survive or not, it was chilling to see him wear a look she last saw frozen on the face of a corpse.

She smiled in his stead, guiding Kratos’ arms out of the river and tugging the cloak toward her. She soaked the end, squeezing the water out over the wounds, then did it again, cleaning them more thoroughly. Kratos didn’t speak, just twitched and shifted slightly, even before she asked, changing position minutely to make the task easier.

This was clearly a man who spent time with healers.

“Do you want something for the pain?” Faye asked. Kratos didn’t flinch, but his pulse, underneath her fingers on his wrists, throbbed. He shook his head. “Suit yourself.”

She leaned back, grabbing her pouch from the riverbank and pulling out the roll of bandages. “Hold still.”

He stayed still, remarkably so, while she wrapped his arms in bandages, only moving when she nudged him.

Satisfied that Kratos’ arms were, if not healing, then not in danger of rotting off, Faye stood, stepping out of the water. “By the time we get home, we’ll be dry enough for our furs again.”


End file.
